For some, it is a record fine, for others a good deal for Facebook. The internet empire created and led by Mark Zuckerberg agreed on Wednesday, July 24, to pay five billion dollars for "cheating" users of the social network.
This sanction is the result of an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US telecommunications regulator, which closes an investigation into breaches of the privacy of Internet users, started in 2018 as a result of the Cambridge Analytica case.
$ 5 billion penalty against FB is the largest ever imposed on any co for violating consumers' privacy, 200x greater than any prior privacy penalty in US + more than 20x larger than biggest privacy penalty ever imposed worldwide. pic.twitter.com/BO6J06WE1d
FTC (@FTC) July 24, 2019Independent Committee
Facebook is not only paying a record fine. The Californian group will also have to set up an independent committee on the protection of privacy and change internal rules relating to the collection of personal data.
"This deal will require a fundamental change in the way we work," Facebook said in a statement. "The type of responsibility required by the agreement goes further than the US law and we hope that it will be a model for the whole sector", seems to rejoice the juggernaut of the Internet.
For critics of this compromise, Facebook has, indeed, something to celebrate. The terms of the deal proved controversial within the FTC, where two out of five voted against.
The FTC too lenient ?
The main criticism addressed to the American authority concerns the amount of the fine, considered too lenient. Facebook, which has a week to fix it, should not be too expensive to pay for it. The group has, in fact, achieved a turnover of 16 billion dollars in the second quarter of the year and its profits amounted to 22 billion dollars in 2018. "This fine is a Christmas present for Facebook five months before the date ", had blasted on Twitter David Cicilline, the Democratic director of the subcommittee on competition of the House of Representatives, when the amount of the sanction had been revealed on July 12th.
But critics are also raging against a compromise clause underlining that the $ 5 billion cover all breaches of privacy of "known" and "unknown" users. "What 'unknown' violations are we talking about, Facebook knows, but not the public," Rohit Chopra, one of the two FTC members who voted against the deal, complained on Twitter.
In addition, none of the group's top executives are personally liable for the privacy breaches raised by the FTC. Still, the regulator originally planned to put Mark Zuckerberg on the dock, reports the Washington Post.
Detractors of this agreement can still hope that the Department of Justice is more severe. It has, in fact, opened on Tuesday, July 23, an investigation against the major giants of the tech - including Facebook - to determine if they abuse their dominant position.